This is not a collaboration you thought could happen or would happen. Extinct reminded me a bit of the more noisy performances at the legendary Maschinenfest festivals I’ve attended over the years. Like pre-Hands ORPHX or early Synapscape. Become reacquainted with some beautiful music / rhythmic noise.
Constantly progressing, creating beautiful chaos
Made you look! And no, we are not kidding you. This is an actual release; it’s playing at this exact moment, and I’m as surprised as you are. Jack Dangers is known as the one continuous member of Meat Beat Manifesto who, in their turn, have been a constant factor in experimentation with beats and sounds, resulting in being called one of the most influential groups when it comes to techno, breakbeat, industrial, dub, trip-hop, breakbeats and drum ‘n bass. THAT Jack Dangers has lined up with Masami Akita, the only Merzbow member, known for being the godfather of Japanese noise with his 400+ releases and still counting. And admit it: this is not a collaboration you thought could happen or would happen.
Cold Spring from the UK released the two long tracks (and a shorter radio ‘friendly’ remix of one of them, which you can find on Soundcloud, for example). They created and released it on three formats: CD, black vinyl and limited red vinyl. And as always with the CSR, they release beautiful artwork by Abby Helasdottir / Gydja, but…
You know, the release is still playing. This is some heavy stuff.
With proper promotional texts and info, although there is one thing missing in those texts: Whose idea was it? What triggered these men to do this? Was it an idea of CSR-HQ to connect two people in their network? Was it Jack visiting a Merzbow concert and having a talk afterwards? Or did Masami approach Jack? That would be something that would be interesting as a little extra info. For me, at least. I’ll tell you why when we go through the tracks.
Extinct has two tracks, the 20-minute “¡FLAKKA!” and the 15-minute “Burner.” The two tracks are quite different in their approach. “¡FLAKKA!” is based firmly on the beats of Jack with added noise(s) from Masami—not in a cut and paste kinda way, but more in the way of meticulously layering them and placing them on the moments where they should be. The noise and the rhythmic layer are constantly progressing, creating beautiful chaos. The almost 5-minute radio edit shows this, too, and in all honesty, any radio station playing this has some proper gonads. It’s a radio edit, but radio-friendly is a whole different story. The 15, almost 16-minute “Burner” has the same layered approach but seems way more noisy than “¡FLAKKA!.” The beats or rhythmic parts seem more loop-based. Kind of like the parts of the rhythmic structure were sampled from a noise track.
Extinct reminded me a bit of the more noisy performances at the legendary Maschinenfest festivals I’ve attended over the years. Like pre-Hands ORPHX or early Synapscape, maybe. So I like? Hell, yes, it’s a welcome addition to the CSR catalogue and my collection. But it’s not new to my ears—and having said that, that’s also not a bad thing. It might open the doors for people to become reacquainted with some beautiful music / rhythmic noise made in the last 20 or so years. Maybe that’s why one of the tracks is called “¡FLAKKA!”—because it serves as a gateway drug to… Hmm… Who knows…
Review by: Bauke van der Wal / Vital Weekly #1424. Reprinted with permission.
Extinct is available on Cold Spring April 26, 2024. [Bandcamp | Site]
pre-order LP | ltd red vinyl LP | CD | pre-save digital Bandcamp
